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Flic buttons, my next adventure

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything new about my experiences with home automation, largely because I haven’t done anything new in a few months. I’ve been busy, and at the same time, things are working as expected, so I haven’t come up with new ideas to test or dreamt up something else to automate (much to my husband’s relief).

That said, I’ve been thinking about replacing our hacked Amazon Dash buttons with something purpose-built. While the hijacked buttons work well-enough, there’s a noticeable delay between button press and response, and their battery life is quite finite. Also, there’s only so much one can do with vinyl tape to make the Dash buttons less of an eyesore.

Enter Flic, one of the only “smart buttons” available right now, and the only one I’ve found that doesn’t require its own hub. Fortunately, they offer a Linux SDK, so I can associate the buttons with one of my Raspberry Pis, rather than a smartphone (alleviating a common complaint about the product). Since the SDK requires exclusive use of a device’s Bluetooth controller, I benefit from having two Pis, and this project is simplified because the Pi I intended to use with the Flic happens to be the one whose Bluetooth isn’t in use.

My first project is to configure the Flic button to toggle the lights on our Christmas Tree. The lights are connected to a SmartThings outlet, which turns up in our Home Assistant instance thanks to MQTT, but Home Assistant is only accessible to my husband and I, while any of our guests should be able to turn on the tree. 🎄